Young Writers Society

I gave Violet a look of disbelief. I didn't miss the irony in the question I was about to ask, seeing that I had tried drinking once or twice despite my physical age.

"Aren't you too young to be drinking?" I started to ask her, but faltered when I realized one person had fallen down. Sophie's comment was left unanswered by me as I turned to look at who had fallen.

She was muttering something underneath her breath. I was too far away to make out the words, but she looked like she was panicking over something. I took a step forward.

Then I stopped, noticing that the Phantom had already beat me to checking on her.

I lingered where I was, watching from afar to make sure she was alright.

Sophie froze as a hand touched her shoulder. It was like a moment when she had not been paying attention and had eaten her ice cream too quickly. A chill froze from her shoulder through her body. Suddenly the cold ran through her brain and she realised she was somewhere she didn't want to be.

Sophie overheard what the girl said at the beginning and tried to make out what was going on in that brief moment of shivering. She felt uncomfortable and lost. But even that didn't make her feel like giving up, but rather getting up. But her legs could not and she remained on the floor. She had to look ridiculous among all the others, but she didn't care.

Slowly but surely, she tried to react and looked at the girl.

"Yes, I hear you."

Sophie wasn't sure whether she should or even was allowed to ask that, but she did anyway.

"Are you a vampire? You look so pale and are dead cold."

"I'm responsible," said Violet, but she faltered too when Skull and the others stopped walking. The girl who was just as eager to find a bar as she had stopped dead in her tracks and was crouched on the street. Muttering to herself, it looked like. She also looked on the verge of panic.

Violet awkwardly rocked back and forth on her heels, unsure of what to do. She was terrible at comforting people, to the point of being insulting. At least, Sophie and the ghost girl were checking on her.

There were so many voices in my mind, laughing and shouting vile and disgusting names and insults.

They were recreations of the monsters in my mind, taunting and whispering that made me ache-made me hurt. I felt it swelling in my chest, threatening to choke me. It also manifested as a dull pain in my spine and neck.

You are weak, the voices taunted.

"I'm weak"
Your a monster

"I'm a monster" I mumbled as I held my knees closer to my body.

Lost in my thoughts

"Hello, can you hear me?"

Slowly, my mind began to quiet and no one bothered me. I didn't acknowledge she was there until I felt her touch me.

"huh?"

The voices were pushed away and silenced, for now, my focus was on now on the girl in front of me. Susan I think was her name

I became so consumed by such small action but ensured that I didn't admit wanting to accept the fact that all eyes were on me. I don't like this one bit the attention.

Don't let them see you weak

I brush off the girl's hand as I slowly stood up sparing everyone a glance, trying to read them.

They are starting to pity you.

Brushing off the back of my pants sparing everyone one last glance casually falling on everyone behind Susan.

"I'm fine. no worries here"

Don't trust them

I try my best not to show any signs, that I am lying straight through my teeth. When I said those words, I did what I know best kept a smile on my face.

Sometimes, my thoughts were incomprehensible. They were like run-on sentences, squished together and never-ending.

"I'm sorry you had to see that"

Don't trust them

I said so only she can hear.

I was nervous, but I didn't want to show it. I didn't know what would happen. What should I expect? No one has seen me broken down before. I just stared at everyone. My mind hurts, it felt blank but at the same time so loud, thoughts clashing in an endless spiral that hurts and hurts.

Pull yourself together Katherine they are already starting to pity you.

"Before we start our Scooby-Doo little adventure, I'm going to need a drink," ---I said with half of a smirk. Hoping to ease the tension.

I know I'm not in the right mindset for such a thing, but I just want everyone to forget what just happened a few minutes ago.

See that wasn't so hard was it, Katherine.

Susan POV

Susan didn't believe a word of what Katherine was saying at the moment. It was very clear from her body language that something was wrong and she was only covering it up.

Vankous. She's not alright, is she?

No, but I don't believe there is anything we can do at the moment besides let things play out.

That's dangerou

Very. But so is the place we're in.

Doing a mental shrug, Susan nodded to the girl. "Great then." She took a few steps back, not quite knowing what to follow that up with before turning to Sophie who'd asked a question not too long ago.

"I'm...complicated," Susan said, hoping she didn't sound ridiculous, "but I'm not alive, not anymore."

I had no idea that Vankous and the Phantom were also questioning if the girl previously muttering on the ground was doing alright, but I decided I could push it later. She'd probably just deflect if confronted in a group of strangers. In the meantime, I could be more concerned about two seemingly underage members of said group wanting a drink. Maybe I was a hypocrite, seeing that I looked barely over seventeen.

I groaned. I had to blame Nikko or Lucy for that one. Why else would I be so worried about a set of teenagers? If either of them had tried drinking, I would have grabbed the bottle and thrown it out the metaphorical window.

"Whatever drinks we find probably aren't going to be drinkable," I pointed out, "since this place is so abandoned. I bet they took all the good stuff with them."

I wasn't sure what the good stuff was, but I assumed it wouldn't be in an abandoned place like this. I wasn't sure what I would do if it was.

But before I could figure that out, I caught a glimpse of something shimmering out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see a tall, tall building popping into existence right across the street from where we had been spat out on the slide earlier. It hadn't been there before. I couldn't have missed a building that seemed to reach up to the sky.

And, lo and behold, the broken old sign in front of the building said Hotel and Bar in faded, once lit letters.

"Let's go there," I said, pointing at it.

It seemed as if time suddenly stood still. Around Sophie, the others came and ignored her. Sophie didn't notice that there were others who were somehow strange or had problems. So much information was coming at her that she didn't know where to look, so she kept her eyes on Katherine. She was not the only one who had her eyes on her.

Stirring up as to what was going to happen, she realised with a corner of her eye that Susan was giving her an answer and Skull was also somehow saying something and hinting at something Sophie couldn't make out directly in the darkness.

I'll just count to three now and get organised. I can't go down here before anything starts...

Sophie looked up.

One, two, three.

Sophie turned to Susan first. She was the oddest of them all, but at the same time, she seemed the nicest.

"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it."

She then turned to Katherine.

"Are you all right?"

Then Sophie stood up and turned to Skull.

"Let's go. Did I forget anyone?"

That was heartless, just ticking everyone off here like it was a to-do list and not caring anymore.
Yeah, could be...

"I guess you're right," sighed Violet. "Any drink would probably taste gross."

At least Skull saw a building they could rest in. Or explore... A grin spread across her face, and she rubbed her hands excitedly. Now that the girl had calmed down, Violet wasted no time imagining all the various scenarios they would find in the hotel.

Maybe the hotel was home to a demon or a monster, and they'd have to fight it off. Or they would have to play strategic games in order to not die.

Violet's hands itched for her sword, or a knife, or any object that could be used as a weapon.

"What do you guys think we'll find in there?" asked Violet. "A clue, or something dangerous? I hope it's something dangerous, 'cuz I want to fight something. You'll let me get the first hit, right?"

Susan

Susan gave the girl a smile. On one hand, she would've loved to talk but also they were stuck in a place none of them knew that was potentially very dangerous not to mention she couldn't spit out too many words without completely making a fool out of herself.

Vankous

Vankous marched over past Susan and to the back of the group gesturing for Susan to follow as they walked out of earshot from everyone.

"What?" she asked, already knowing where this was going.

"We follow the Skull guy into that building..." began Vankous but Susan cut him off.

"Invisibly, yes your plan couldn't be more obvious if you tried Va....Cerebro," said Susan, almost slipping up and using his actual name.

"I wasn't that obvious," he muttered before casting the appropriate spell, adding in some silencing spells for good measure.

Susan rolled her eyes and vanished from view. Vankous smiled. While he was only invisible and might end up being discovered, Susan in her intangible state was completely impossible to detect unless you were someone like Harry, and no one here seemed to be quite as capable.

"If I don't beat you to it," I said to Violet. Her eagerness for a fight reminded me of several people I knew, the most notable ones being the entirety of Lockwood and Co. and Nikko's little group of teenage heroes.

I stretched a little. I couldn't do too much, but I liked the idea of tapping into my own ghostly abilities if given the chance—especially after my questionable temperature changes earlier.

I walked over to the hotel. The door creaked when I pushed in on it. It had once been latched into place, but that time had been a long time ago. The floor underneath my feet was coated in a fine layer of dust, and the tables in what appeared to be the tavern part of the building were similarly dusty. There was a bar to the right, and a set of stairs leading to the higher floors on the left.

Sophie shook her head. How could it be that the others saw the whole thing so flippantly?

It's all sheer madness. What are we going to do if we fight anything? We don't even have weapons or powers.

Then she realised that all she had to do was imagine what this was and it would happen. That brief spark of hope gave her a drive to at least get back up and look in the same direction Skull and the others were going. That Sophie was so easily led astray she could not fathom and at the same time she was unsure how it could be that the others, tired of life as they were, simply followed Skull.

Am I perhaps the character in the video game who dies first?

Sophie shuddered at the thought and imagined herself standing next to her heroes in the video games. Her legs were a little wobbly and a dizziness in her face briefly made her feel like she was seeing everything twice. But she tried to come across as confident.

Even if I don't have the strength to go through this yet, there's still an arc to come!

Sophie decided to stay strong and was able to steady her legs. With each new second she got faster and hurried to the rest of the group and overtook them.

While her mind was still on a possible plan, she muttered to herself.

"R1 is for dodging and X and Y are for attacking!"

She didn't realise she was now several feet ahead of the others when a glowing feeling in her head gave her the emotion to make it all happen.

With the power of friendship!

"Kill it, Sophie!" shouted Violet, pumping her fist into the air. "Show those monsters what for!"

I wasn't sure what monsters we were talking about, but I appreciated the spirit. If we did run into anything, I wouldn't be handling it on my own.

...Unless it was all bravado, and both of them ran away when push came to shove.

Eh, I'd cross that bridge when I got to it.

In the meantime, I turned my attention to the bar. For a place that was so abandoned, the bar was surprisingly well-stocked. Even more bizarrely, there were still glasses out on the bar. When I glanced around the rest of the building, I noticed the same exact thing: glasses and places left out on tables.

"This feels like the set-up for a haunting," I muttered, picking up one of the glasses and looking it over.

Sophie was suddenly brought out of her thoughts when she heard "monster". A feeling of cluelessness and panic spread through her.

"Where? How? Where's my gun?"

She searched frantically for a gun or anything to defend herself but found nothing.

Shocked and terrified, she spun in circles. Almost like a ballerina, or more like a spinning top, she spun and didn't notice how she slammed into the bar, dropping all the beautiful glasses into a thousand tiny crystals.

There was a loud bang as the pile of shards slowly crashed to the floor like hail, leaving at least Skull standing there dumbfounded. Sophie's head spun for a while, seeing everything double. It seemed to her that this had happened several times before.

Somewhat confused, she tried to get up and staggered towards a table, where she knocked over the glasses as well. She managed to hold one before it landed on the floor.

It took a while, which seemed like hours to Sophie, for her to calm down to some extent.

"There are no monsters here!" she said, noticing her reflection in the bar. The wide glass had taken up almost the entire side of the wall, mirroring this place. Intrigued by this, Sophie marched closer to it and stepped over the shards to see her mask.

"Beautiful..."

I blinked.

I...wasn't really sure what had just happened. Sophie had bumped into the tables and seemed delirious right now, but for the death of me I couldn't figure out how. Was there something in the air? Some kind of ghostly miasma that just didn't affect me because I wasn't really living in the same way as the others here?

"Did you already get into alcohol?" I questioned, watching her look at her reflection.

...On second thought, I hadn't seen my reflection, either.

I walked over to Sophie and peered into the same mirror as her. I was wearing a fittingly skull-shaped mask. The mask looked like it was made out of something like bronze, even though it felt surprisingly light. I appreciated the thought. Iron and silver didn't irritate me like it had once, but it still brought an instinctual sense of unease with it.

I smirked. At least whoever had done this to us had taste.